Ladies and gentlemen, hello. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for having accepted our invitation to attend the publishing of our H1 Results for 2021. Before we start today's presentation, I would like to introduce you all to Philippe Mellier, our new Chairman of the Board. I would like to welcome him. I will now hand over the floor to Mr. Mellier.
Hervé, thank you very much. It is a pleasure for me to be here today. I am the new kid on the block, so to speak. I joined the board on the 30th of June this year. I have been here for just on one month. I have been working so much to come up to speed with everything that Solocal does. I am feeling quite comfortable.
Along with Hervé, our CEO, and myself as Chairman of the Board, the two of us, we will open up a new chapter for Solocal. We are like peas in a pod in that we are both practical-minded, we aren't one for great promises and big statements. We really want to focus on what the teams want, and that's what Solocal needs today. I held the first board meeting just yesterday, and I wanted to really breathe a new sense of demanding requirements that is so necessary for the success of Solocal in the coming years and months. Obviously, Hervé is fully on board with carrying business forward, and there's a lot of work cut out for him, and he'll tell us about the results in just a few moments. Just a few quick words about my past and my career.
I have been one to rework and transform major industrial companies such as Alstom Transport, a diamond production company, De Beers, and also a major European leader for industrial vehicles. As you can see that I have quite a broad experience in a number of businesses, and I have considerable experience also in governance, in corporate governance, be it in France or in Great Britain. I have quite a number of qualities and experience from my own career that I will be able to best utilize to help Hervé bring the project to fruition. Hervé has considerable experience in managerial positions at high levels in a number of industries. That is so important for us, especially when it comes to focusing on improving our clients, in improving the efficiency of our sales teams, be it at Docaposte, Mediapost, Lyreco, or Teleperformance.
I think our joint experience work well together hand in hand in boosting growth for Solocal in the future. Today, we want to focus on customers. We want to focus on the lifeblood of Solocal, be it our sales force teams or our technical teams, our service teams, to be able to create further value in the future, which is so important for you, our shareholders. We spoke about a number of key points in our press release, with Hervé and his teams, we have been really working tirelessly to come up with a three-year strategy for Solocal as a group so that we can create value that benefits our shareholders and which will help grow our company. That is our top priority. They're just a few introductory remarks that I wanted to share with you today.
Obviously, I will be here for this morning's presentations, and I will now hand over the floor to Hervé to present the results.
Philippe, thank you very much. What are the key messages that we have for the H1 of 2021? As Philippe just mentioned, we have a number of changes in management and governance over the past few months. I won't go over them again. There are a few major points that I want to focus on in terms of 2021 and business. First and foremost, our revenue in Q2 is stable compared to 2020, and that is a positive sign that we're seeing there. What that shows is that our business model is starting to bear fruits and be in a virtuous cycle.
Because of that, we can now have end of June landing in 2021 with revenue, which is only back 5% compared to 2020. We also have a client base, this is the second point, a client base that is stabilized for the third quarter in a row. I don't think it's really worth going back over the churn that we had to deal with over the past few years. I think this is just a positive sign that we have a stabilized client base. I think it's such a fundamental point. Because of that, we will be able to have better forecast for growth in the coming weeks and months. Underlying all that is that we have an overall decrease in churn rates. Obviously, we can focus on the fact that we have good KPIs that show that. We also have stable ARPA.
ARPA, which is in line with our business forecasts. Olivier will tell us more about our learning just a little later. What I could say is that we have an overall gross margin of 89% and a 26% EBITDA margin at the end of June 2021. To conclude, to talk about the business model overall, our subscription-based business model, it is supporting the robust nature of our business portfolio and our income. We have investments in terms of customer service, which are really starting to turn back a positive return on investment, be it in terms of customer retention rate, churn, customer satisfaction.
Yet there are still many challenges that are yet to be overcome, and we will strive to overcome them in the coming weeks. That is what I wanted to say to you as just a few introductory remarks for the presentation. What I would now like to suggest is that we focus on our financial results. For that, over to Olivier.
Hervé, thank you very much. Hello to each and every one of you. Throughout this presentation, for the first half results, there are four key items to bear in mind, as Hervé mentioned. First and foremost, our revenue. It stabilized in the second quarter, which meant that we were able to limit the overall drop of revenue, and we limited it from going from -10% to -5% for the first half.
This has been a number of years that the group hasn't been able to stabilize its revenue, but we have managed to do so. Also, in terms of secured revenue, we will talk about this at greater length a little later on in the presentation. EUR 365 million as of 30th of June 2021. This is compared to EUR 388 million at the end of June 2020. Moving on. EUR 56.5 million in EBITDA in H1 2021. This is back compared to H1 2020, but is strongly up compared to what we saw in the first half overall as 2021. This is predominantly due to the impact that we saw from government assistance that in the H1 of 2020, that was non-recurrent items there, and that has a positive impact for 2020, which we currently compare to 2021.
Also, positive cash flow generation in H1 2021, which means that we've been able to have good liquidity levels, EUR 71 million in all. Also, you would have seen in our press release that came out in July, we were able to pay back some EUR 6 million in RCF. That's planned, sorry, for September 2021, EUR 3 million in cash, EUR 3 million in stock. Let's now look at some of the main revenue indicators. First and foremost, let's just have a few reminders. Our sales, that is something that we calculate in terms of order intake. We see that the impact of that is something that can be calculated over 12-18 months. When we want to look at revenue, this is actually a reflection of past business, but doesn't reflect current business. Order intake, it tends to represent just an overall dynamic, a sales dynamic.
That's what I want to say just as a foreword before we get into the heart of the matter. Let's now look at order backlog. Order backlog for June 2021. It's actually 55% down compared to 31st of March 2021. This is under what we expected, and this is what we released in the press release on the 29th of June this year. Because this performance is under our expectations, this can be explained by two main reasons. First, and Hervé will touch on this a little later, is that we faced a number of difficulties in the field by our sales teams because they had to adapt to a business model that was on acquisition-based as opposed to renewal-based, which we saw previous years.
The second effect is because we had a third lockdown in the month of April, where schools were closed down for a part of the month, which had a negative impact on our sales. That said, we have a number of positive items I could focus on. As we said earlier, stabilized revenue. You can see on the bottom right there, we have a number of quarters where we haven't been able to have a solid, stable revenue. We are finally getting there. We also have a penetration rate for our subscription-based model, which is represented by about 87% of our orders. What that means is that we have much more visibility for the coming months in terms of revenue. Lastly, thanks to our sales, we have 26% extra of revenue for the coming 12 months compared to the past 12 months.
As I'm sure you're all aware of, we look at a key indicator, secured revenue for the year. Let's just look at what that means. Not many businesses do that, but we do it because it gives us good visibility for annual revenue. The way we calculate this is by looking at revenue for which we are certain, revenue that will definitely come in over the year. This is not taking into account any acquisitions or any contracts for which the renewal is set to come during the half, but which didn't, wasn't actually renewed. When we look at that, we have revenue of EUR 215 million and order backlog of EUR 266 million. What that means is that we have a revenue conversion for the next six months of EUR 150 million.
That gives us an overall secured revenue of EUR 365 million by the end of the year. Obviously, if we also take into account all of the renewal contract renewals that will come into effect during the second half, these are automatic renewals I am talking about, then that figure will obviously be much higher. Secured revenue is actually a little down compared to last year by EUR 23 million. That means because of the 31st of March, it was actually down EUR 52 million. What that shows, we are lowering the gap, and that shows that we are moving closer and closer to a more stabilized revenue. Now let's look at a business by business breakdown of revenue. Solocal for the H1 of 2021 is still considerably hit by the drop in sales that we saw in 2020 because of the health crisis.
Our order intake dropped by about EUR 110 million from 2019 to 2020. In the H1 of 2021 and the Q1 reflect that drop in order intake, which had a delayed effect on our revenues. Our products can be broken down into three ranges. We have Connect, which is our digital range. We have our Sites, it's aptly named, and also we have Booster. Booster is for all of the digital advertising business that we have. Those three businesses change quite differently over the first half. Connect up 18.6%, which is quite considerable. That's up compared to the H1 of 2020.
We also saw that there was quite an interesting change there for our Websites, and also we are starting to reap the benefits from all of the work that we did in 2019 on completely overhauling that business line, and that was for Booster. If we move on to Websites is a little back compared to last year. I'm sure you can all remember that 2020 was a year that was considerably hit by the fact that we had our sales teams that weren't too sure of how to sell that specific offer. That is completely behind us now, and Hervé will touch on that a little later.
Another point that we can touch on is that Q1 had a non-recurrent item that impacted our revenue, but that has been restated, which means that we're actually slightly up in terms of revenue for Websites. Booster is still down 12.4% compared to last year. What that means is that advertising budgets are limited and our professional customer bases have chosen to drop their advertising budgets, obviously, because the health crisis becoming more prolonged. I think this is perfectly reflected by the fact that a number of our customers had to close their business for a short or if not a long time, and that has had a drastic effect on their overall advertising budgets. This is why our EUR 215 million drop for the Q1 of Q1 2021. How does this all affect our EBITDA?
Well, I'm sure you all remember H1 2020, EUR 74 million. That's compared to EUR 57 million this year. Why is there such a drop? There are two main reasons why. I'm sure you remember in Q2 2020 as part of the first lockdown, the government put in place a number of financial assistance packages to help companies pay those employees who were on short time contracts or partial unemployment. We were able to utilize those subsidies for, and we got EUR 13 million. That's EUR 9 million in personnel fees. Also, there were a number of indirect effects because, for example, a number of these employees who were laid off just for a short amount of time, they weren't attending seminars, they didn't have any fees that they had to claim. That's why we also saw a drop there, negative 13% non-recurrent.
Therefore, the overall basis to compare these two doesn't quite pair up because again, these were non-recurrent effects. We also saw a drop in order intake for H1 2020, this is why we can see that this had an impact on the following quarters which means that we overall have a drop of EUR 12 million and in gross margins down EUR 10. Aside that, we were able to have a positive impact on cost savings to have a positive EUR 6 million in cost savings. Therefore, when we compare the two different rates, we now have recurring EBITDA H1 2021, which actually reflects all of the elements that I just mentioned to you. If we now look at our profit and loss in greater detail, you can see that there's a drop in revenue which is reflected there.
Also right down the bottom of the profit and loss, we have all of the sales and divestments that we had. For example, Mappy and QDQ that came into effect in H1 2020. Also we have the sale of all of our print business which had an impact in 2020 as well. That means we have an overall drop of 5%, as we said, recurrent EBITDA down EUR 56 million. We have non-recurrent items which are actually positive for H1 2021. These non-recurrent items, what this is, for example, the provisions that we had to put into effect for the 2018, 2019 redundancy package, which we are paying out just the last installments of that, which meant that we have an overall operating profit of EUR 34 million.
Financial results is considerably down with financial costs at EUR 26 million in H1 2020, and we only had EUR 14 million in financial costs. Why is there a drop there? Well, I'm sure you remember financial restructuring. That meant that we could drop the nominal part of that quite considerably. That was one reason why, and also the coupon rate, which we dropped from 10%- 8% for most of our debt. Because of that, we have an overall consolidated net income for H1 2021 of EUR 11.5 million. Moving on to another item, I'm sure you remember that we made a commitment to drop CapEx from EUR 44 million- EUR 35 million, and we have done it. We have been able to drop it from EUR 22 million last year to EUR 17 million for the first half.
All of our investment were being focused on our strategic areas. Another key feature for this half is that we have been able to stabilize our cash flow and cash generation. For the past two years that I've been here, this is the first time that we have been able to actually generate cash over 1/2 year. We've been able to generate cash despite an EBITDA that is dropping. How so? This is because we have been able to work on our working capital requirements. I'm sure that you remember that the WCR for customer receivables is actually quite an important factor here. The WCR receivables is a key reflection of our sales activity, and you can see it in the H1 of 2020. The WCR receivables was EUR 50 million down.
EUR 50 million, that reflects the massive drop in order intake that we saw in the Q2 of 2020. That stabilized in 2021 for the Q1. That is the reason why we have been able to double the overall cash flow for recurring free cash flow from EUR 17 up to roughly EUR 34 million. That's because in the half, we paid back EUR 10 million that we had to owe back to the government, and we have EUR 9 million remaining to be repaid between now and the end of 2021. In terms of non-recurring items, EUR 7 million were disbursed in H1 2021. Where does that EUR 7 million come from? Well, it comes from paying off the redundancy plan from the 2018/2019 redundancy plan. Now, EUR 7 million, that's not the main focus area.
The main focus area is that we have still EUR 3 million to be repaid after 30th of June 2021. EUR 225 million for the company. Really that's showing that we are at the end of the tunnel. I'm sure you can all remember that in the others line, we also include the IFRS 16 cash impact, such as the rents for our head office and also for our different sites around France, Bordeaux, Rennes, Angoulême. These are our main sites, and those are covered in the others line, and that represents roughly EUR 10 million per quarter. Just under EUR 20 million. Sorry, EUR 10 million for the half, EUR 20 million for the year. That means that we have a net cash of EUR 71 million right now at the end of 30th of June 2021.
I'm sure that you saw quite clearly at the beginning here that we are going to continue as part of the partial repayment of the RCF as announced in the financial restructuring plan. We wanted to pay back part of that between EUR 5 million-EUR 10 million 30th of September 2021. Same will happen again in 2022, and so on and so forth. We were able to choose what amounts we're going to pay off, between EUR 5 million and EUR 10 million, and also how we're going to do it, either as cash or in new shares. We chose to pay back EUR 6 million, EUR 3 million of which is in cash, EUR 3 million in new shares. The calculation of the number of shares to be issued will be based on the weighted VWAP rate from the August to September period.
The overall RCF is now at EUR 4 million end of September 2021.
One key item, this is the first time that we actually pay back our debt in cash. EUR 3 million doesn't look like much, but it is a strong signal we're sending. Regarding the financial structure at the end of June, so prior to the reimbursement of the EUR 6 million, we have a gross debt of EUR 258 million, cash EUR 71, so we have a net debt of EUR 187 million, and the leverage ratio, that is EBITDA over net debt, as defined by the banking regulations, a multiple of 2.3. The ratio between EBITDA and the financial interest in 12 months is 3.3. That's the interest coverage ratio. We have room for maneuver, what is known as headroom at end December 2021. I'll give the floor to Hervé now, who will give you more details about the business as such and the trends as they appear.
Thank you, Olivier. Regarding the business review, let us look at six highlights in H1 2021. Four items are to be mentioned. First, we have a stable customer base for the Q3 running. I'll get back to that in a minute. We have confirmed a significant reduction in churn. There we are ahead of our plan, so far so good. ARPA is in line with our expectations, and our renewal base is growing. At end June 2021, 89% of clients have decided to go for subscription, that is auto renewal. There are two items I would like to draw your attention to. Number one, client acquisition is a challenge, and I'll get back to that in a minute. The PagesJaunes readership has been challenged as well. That's in terms of single visits, but it's not just that.
We also have a regulatory context that has changed recently, back in April of this year. Regarding the customer base, what does it look like? It's stable at 314,000 customers. That base, and indeed, this slide will draw your attention to two things. Number one, we have a good way of halting any sign of decline. Churn, in particular, is significantly down compared to 2020. Significant efforts were made by our teams to make sure that our customers remain loyal, especially our distance salespeople. That win back, that is getting old customers back, is working as well, and we will be investing there as well. These are the two strong points, win backs up, churn down. What is not satisfactory is acquiring new customers, the volume of new customers that have been roped in, as it were.
We only acquired 4,000 new customers in H1, and that is not satisfactory and that is where we really need to work in the weeks to come. ARPA, as I said, is right on track, in line with our expectations. Another indicator, that is a similar trend. It's a positive trend, both in terms of churn rate, so that churn rate was down, but also retention rate is up. Churn landing at end June is 13.9%. You have to remember that at end December 2020, it stood at 19%. A significant effort again was made there. Churn can still be improved. We can bring it down. I think we can gain a couple of points in terms of churn. The point here is that why it is that people leave us or why do they stay?
At Solocal, 60% of churn is due to the sale itself. Upstream in our customer journey, this is where people turn away. It means we have to train our salespeople. They have to be able to educate our customers, our prospects. Maybe the offer is too complicated, may be why people sort of tend to shy away. It is essential for our customers to understand what it is they have purchased and how it's going to work for them. That's why people turn away. Retention works well. I mean, 54%, I mean, it's all very well, by the way, to be able to retain a customer, it's even better to be able to hang on to that customer's associated value because, of course, it's not just that people are still customers. They have to bring in business.
What we have to look at as the revenue brought in by individual customers, at least those who initially said they were thinking of moving away. It's not just being able to keep them, to retain them, but also being able to keep revenue from them. I said there were six highlights here, and there's one which is a significant change in the regulatory context, and that is the way in which we work out our audiences on Pages Jaunes. Since December of last year, the French authority, CNIL, has published a number of directives regarding the protection of privacy, especially private data. What's the consequences of that? Well, one thing is that from now on, we will not be in a position to consolidate audience of our partners using the third-party cookies.
Third-party cookies are still allowed, but, and this is a big but, the web surfers have got to give their explicit consent. That makes it very difficult to work out of audiences, because we haven't got the wherewithal anymore. Is that an issue? Is that a risk? This may surprise you, but I think this is a great opportunity. Why? PagesJaunes is a great piece of media, but it is a very powerful search engine and a very relevant and focused search engine because it is out there to search your local answer. Queries and searches may well be the key indicator when it comes to working out the effectiveness of PagesJaunes. We are now in a position where we indeed can track searches, and in fact, this is the new indicator as opposed to actual visits. Searches now.
Searches, you should note that this is, of course, this is not a PagesJaunes monopoly. This is not an exclusive item. All the search engines have been monitoring searches, both searches or requests. Google is, of course, the number one provider, and it publishes its numbers on requests and not on audiences or visits. That is what it reports on. On a pro forma basis, if we look at H1 2019, H1 2020, and H1 2021, what can be monitored here is the activity of our PagesJaunes search engine to see how much it has been used. Now, well, it looks as though it's improving, but make no mistake, the 2020 basis was highly favorable because we're right in a lockdown. You had closedowns, especially shops and restaurants, and that is a critical aspect of our business in PagesJaunes. Of course, we can be content.
We can be happy with an improvement on that. The comparison basis, of course, isn't right. That is our own improvement. Vis-à-vis the competition, there is an improvement in performance, and you can see that the SEO work we're doing and the work we're doing with Google has brought us to that level of performance. The various indicators have been mentioned earlier, but let's focus on three themes, which to me are highly representative of what we've experienced in H1 Websites, large accounts, and the enterprise sales force. Websites. Websites is a fundamental building block for the digital services solutions. We have three offers, the entry-level, then you have Premium, and that is where you have the largest numbers, and then Privilege, what you call Privilege is the high-value, high-end offer. This Websites offer has basically two underlying principles. Number one, onboarding.
I mentioned this during the AGM. You may remember that we shall make no exception whether this be a Privilege or an entry-level or high-level Site, we will be onboarding our customers. In other words, we will make sure that we will see them through the publication of their digital window. This is fundamental. We will not discriminate against our more modest customers. That's number one. There's no compromise between content and the technological solution. Some will focus just on content, others on the technological solution, but our ambition is to deliver on both fronts. We want to provide an end-to-end solution, which is ready to use, which is ready to go for our Sites. We have to offer a turnkey solution. Now, why are we focusing on Websites? Well, as Olivier said earlier on, we did encounter a number of challenges in this area.
What's the profile of site owners at Solocal? Well, number one, 80% of website customers have at least one additional product. It goes to show on top of the website, which means that the website is a huge penetration weapon. Number two is ARPA. ARPA now stands at almost twice Solocal's standard ARPA. A huge indicator there. Then digital customers, people who go for the website are key players in Solocal's ecosystem because with our Solocal Manager tool, they make a 30% higher use of all our tools available on the platform. So this reflects the ease of use. Indeed, we want to make sure that our customers' satisfaction in this respect, that is the ease of use of our platforms, is key to our plan. What have we done about it just to make sure we do provide this level of satisfaction?
Well, number one, we want to make sure the Websites we have a tunnel effect for the customer. The tunnel effect, of course, brings with it a huge risk of people pulling out, of canceling the whole thing. This is why we have to make sure the lead times are as short as possible, because during the question, the uncertainty period, people might pull out. Then, of course, the sooner that we go online, the quicker we recognize the associated revenue. It's of course our own interest as well. Then we also had to increase our capacity. We were looking at 1,000 Premium sites at the end of June, and we got to 935. We're pretty close to the target, which means we just about doubled on delivery numbers compared from Q1 to Q2.
Of course, you also have to know that the website has become the site where people move up from Essential to Premium and from Premium to Privilege. In other words, this is where people upgrade their offer. We do need to push that. Now, in the first half of this year, we've found a number of limitations. We found it difficulty to keep progressing in terms of new customers. We have what are known as hunters amongst the full-time employees. Of course, when things started off earlier in the year, we found that in Q2, the transformation rate was rather disappointing because we need six appointments to sign one contract. In this business where the customers are small companies, if you target your customers right, normally you should be able to have one transformation or one contract signed with only four appointments.
We sit at six appointments. The performance part was I'm not saying our hunters are no good, but it means we need to train them better. We need to manage these people better, because at this stage, while they started off encouragingly, promisingly, they're still not efficient enough. This is a long-term project because we are really leaning on these hunters, on our hunter team to acquire new business. In some areas, the model works just fine. Some of our people really have achieved significant performances in terms of acquisitions, in new customer acquisition. That's the hunters. If you look at the traditional sales force, in April 2021, they found themselves facing a completely new deal.
This was a complete sea change in the way they were doing business because by April 2021, all migrations were completed, which meant that instead of having a situation where they were renewing subscriptions, which had been their job since the beginning. Now suddenly, instead of renewing existing customers, they had to recruit new customers. They have to sell new subscription programs. It meant that we had to support them or to train them, and make sure they were equal to the task. Well, we can't do this sort of on a collective basis. It was on an individual basis. Each person had to be assessed. Some of our people stay close to our customers because we need to have this continued presence. We need to monitor our customers.
We need to make sure that especially the high-value customers, we can't just let them go on automatic pilot, as it were. Those who have this in them, that is, to acquire new customers rather than keeping existing customers happy, well, we need to provide them with the additional skills needed for that. Regardless of whether they are hunters or sort of a traditional salespeople, we will have to revisit our contact plan, the way in which we address our customers. The more we help our salespeople target prospects and new customers, the better we do this, the better our model will perform. This will become a virtuous cycle if we can make it happen. That was item number two. Item number three is the large accounts. The end of 2021 ended quite well. That account has to be our growth driver at Solocal.
If you look at the slide, you can see the entire range is represented here. Autosur, which is one of the largest networks of car technical inspections, automotive technical inspections, we work with them on digital advertising, boosting their network. Now, you have to see, the reason we got an award here was no coincidence. This is because we produce 7,000 new contacts a month for all 280 Autosur stations. That is quite a performance. Of course, the Autosur people have certainly seen that there's a definite value for money here. They're a good return on that investment. Now, Connect Réseau was completely revamped in H1 2021, and sure enough, that has brought in results. We won a new large account, Cojean, which is a wellness restaurant network, and they are delighted to work with us.
Then there's another significant item, and not everybody realizes, we're not seen to be a data management player. Yet there you have Lacoste. They're well-known in the garment industry. They want us to go through their own customer base and optimize that database. Now, this is because of our know-how in markets, and that particular know-how means that we should be in a position to help our customers gain more value out of their customer data. What are the challenges to come? Well, on the 20th of October, in a few months' time, we will be, of course, presenting the performance for Q3 2021. This will be our chance to share with you the three-year plan, the three-year strategy, as well as the associated business plan.
Before then, I felt there were three parts of our strategy, which I felt we should share with you, things that we're already working on. Number one, our customers. Know your customer, and see how that knowledge can help boost our own operations. We have to be in a position better to understand our customers, because when we understand them better, this means that we can understand their needs better. We are in a position to identify their expectations, but more to the point, we can provide customer satisfaction. That is key. That, again, is data management. We have to manage our customer data, and that has to be geared up in the months to come for that work to be more effective. The second strategic direction is to move from a product proposition to a digital solutions proposition.
For the months I've been working with Solocal, listening to our employees and our contacts, I wonder what is our profile? At the end of the day, we are in a sort of a SaaS company, a software-as-a-service company. If that is the case, if that is really our actual DNA, well, there are three conditions that need to be met. Number one, we have to offer personalized support. All SaaS companies go all hog in terms of customer support. Creating perceived value. That is, our customers should be happy. They should be happy that they got what they wanted, and they make it known. That is what is known as dashboarding. In other words, we have customers who are completely supported throughout their digital strategy. We have to be constantly trying to not just meet customers' needs, but also preempt them.
Of course, we have to come up with new products. Of course, digital support, digital advertising, they're new services, what we call transactional and relational services, again, using IT. That shows that our customers have their own ecosystems, we have to increase to optimize the use value of that ecosystem so that they realize they can make the most of the treasure they have in their hands with their customer data. Of course, we have to go back to the basic function of PagesJaunes. It is a media. It is, of course, a platform, it is an instrument. It can deliver performance. How can we improve the positioning of PagesJaunes? How can we make it the incontrovertible player? Well, I believe there are two aspects to it.
Number one, customers visiting PagesJaunes may need to be reassured. They may also need security. They feel that we have to provide that sense of security. That asset, PagesJaunes, should be the third party, sort of honest broker who will ensure the effectiveness of their relational and transactional work. If that is the case, our service will be much more relevant, because if we can achieve that kind of relationship, we can certainly become very effective indeed. That is for me, and let's move on to the conclusions of this presentation. As Olivier said so himself, stable revenue in Q2 2021 means that our H1 revenue is down only 5%, pretty stable. Secured revenue with our renewal or subscription model stands at EUR 366 million at 30th June 2021. EBITDA is confirmed at about EUR 120 million.
Again, we were able to stabilize our customer base over the year. The next dates, we will be presenting the numbers for Q3. We will, of course, be presenting the three-year strategic plan by the same token. Thank you for your attention. The time has come for questions if you have any.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press one on your touchpad. Make sure that your phone isn't on silent, then you will be able to ask your question. There are no questions in the lineup. We have one question from Mr. Eric Lang from Finance Connect.
Yes, can everyone hear me?
Yes, we can hear you, Eric.
Yes. Sorry, I was just a little unsure about whether my phone was working or not. I had a question. My first one is, in terms of the plan that you represented, saying that in October, will you be needing extra financing for that October plan? A underlying question is, why have you chosen to pay back half of the RCF in shares, which given that your share price is considerably low for some people?
Just on the three-year plan. For the three-year plan, then we aren't working on the basis that we will need or that we need any additional funding. We won't need any extra funding. Simply because currently, we can't actually take on further debt. Quite clearly, what we are going to do is that we are going to base our three-year plan on a financial structure that we know of currently, and with the financial structuring, and that's the only financial structuring that we will have. That's the first point. Talking about RCF payback, why have we chosen to do a 50-50 split between cash and shares? First and foremost, and I'll say it again, this is the first time in some ten years that Solocal has been able to pay back some of its debt in cash.
That's a first key take-home message. Why did we focus for the other half in shares? Well, this is a facility that we've been able to do because of banking regulations. This is the regulations and agreements that we came to with our debt holders. The reason for that is because when you look at the EUR 3 million, it dilutes the impact that we will have in terms of shares. That impact will actually only be between 1%-2%, so it's minuscule. Our duty for Hervé and myself, we need to ensure that we take all necessary provisions to ensure that we aren't faced with a liquidity issue. We're not talking about just EUR 3 million here or there.
When we look at the coming 12 months of business, what we can clearly see is that EUR 3 million isn't really going to change much. Really, when we look at the 1%-2% change in terms of our share price, it's not that major.
It's quite unfortunate because it is so minor. You say it's a 1%-2% change, sure, that's just guesswork here and there. What if the share rate drops by EUR 0.10? That's going to be a huge % change. Here you're basing an increase in capital based on a predefined share price, then I really fail to see what you're trying to get at there. As we saw in the past, they are basing current finance needs on a future share price. I just really think that because it is so marginal that you haven't chosen to act differently. Clearly, you could have gone for just EUR 3 million cash repayment or just pay back EUR 3 million.
No, Eric, I just want to jump in there because we had said that we were going to pay back between EUR 5 million and EUR 10 million.
We had to pay back between EUR 5 million and EUR 10 million, be it cash or shares. In terms of RCF, we'd been able to consolidate that in midterm loans, and we had a pay reimbursement schedule that we had to uphold. We had the choice between EUR 3 million in cash or otherwise, and we said we want to send this as a clear positive message, a historic message, because we could have diluted the share base. I think you attended the general assembly, and we had a number of questions on that. We asked for the authorization from our shareholders for much higher rates than what we're talking about here. We said we want to give a positive message. I understand, and I hear what you're saying there.
I see that for you don't see it as being a good message, but I hear you there. We think that obviously if the share price goes up, then the dilution will be even less.
Okay. What I hear you saying there is that you're trying to send a good message, that it's a good sign. Given the current state of affairs, then we shouldn't expect to see further dilution of shares by an increase in capital. Is that what you're saying with the new plan?
Yes, that's right. Thank you very much. I think my battery is about to run out, so I will switch over to my computer.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, you can also send your question via the webcast. If you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press one.
Hervé, we have a question from the webcast from Paul Manigo. He's asking about cookies and consent, required consent. You spoke about it in terms of PagesJaunes. In terms of audience, is that not an issue if you can't measure audience levels? What about additional costs given the change of regulation?
To answer the first part of the question in terms of measuring audience levels, so we will be able to continue monitoring that. However, it won't be as precise and comprehensive as it has been so far in terms of raw number of people who have come via our partner sites onto PagesJaunes. They will not be tracked simply because regulation does not allow us to do so.
Once again, is that a major issue?
Well, maybe I could answer that question with my own question.
Someone who is using the Internet, who comes to PagesJaunes and then leaves PagesJaunes straight away without actually interacting with the website, without carrying out any form of search or request, who in the past were actually counted as a visit. Is that worthwhile actually taking into account in our overall figures? Is that going to change the way we work our research system, our search systems? Is it going to change the way we do our business? What we want to do is we want to produce a contact. We want to reach a stage where one in every two searches becomes a proper contact. I think when we look at that, I think that people actually carrying out a search via PagesJaunes is much more relevant in terms of indicators for audience levels than just people visiting a website. That's the first point.
Second, I think that we need to focus much more on the cost that additional researchers will actually have, because I think it's more relevant for us as a business to focus on our search engine business, and that's where additional costs, additional investments will be. We've actually been doing that for some years now.
There are no more questions online. If you wish to ask your question please press one. Well, ladies and gentlemen, given that there are no more questions, I would like to bring this session to a close. Thank you to each and every one of you.